Long time no updates

Yeah, I know. I've been a slacker lately.

I got a house, packed up the layout and moved it, and just haven't put it back together yet. I intended to wait until the walls were finished (there's drywall roughed in, but no tape/mud over the seams). Not sure if I'll actually do that, or get impatient and put the layout back together anyway.


I loaded up the layout on the trailer to move it (don't worry, it was a short, low-speed trip and so far I've only discovered one rail that got damaged in transit)

Here's the approximate position it'll be in. I will need to rework the lower end of it here... not quite enough room to make the bend.

I decided to separate layout lighting and aisle lighting... I got some track lighting for the aisleways. Layout lighting will eventually be computer-controlled multicolor LED inside a layout valance.

N scale earthquake hits West Virginia

Here's how the layout looked up until this afternoon.



Here's how it looks now.




Fret not, C&O fans and N-scalers. I'm not abandoning ship. To move forward, sometimes you have to take a step back. The first post I made on this blog included the following comment:

Since this is still not a permanent location, I've been building in segments around the concept of Layout Design Elements. While not truly modular, these segments are designed to be disassembled readily and re-assembled elsewhere with relative ease (as opposed to destroying and rebuilding an entire layout).

That time has come. With some luck, I will soon close on a house with a larger "train room". I may need to modify some of the Quinnimont old yard segments to fit the new space, but otherwise this should be a straightforward swap from one basement to another with little progress lost. The fact that it will be an owned (not rented) space means I have more freedom in the way of room finishings and modifying the space as needed. It being a more permanent space also means I may build some areas of the layout to fit the space, rather than generic-sized LDEs.